Kenneth
JandaPolitical Parties: A Cross-National SurveyNew York: The Free
Press, 1980: pp. 300-301INDIA: The Party System in 1950-1956 and
1957-19621

(Text
as published in 1980 citation above)

British control of the Indian
subcontinent ended in August 1947 with the territory divided
into two independent states based primarily on religious
majorities. The western and eastern portions, with
predominantly Muslim populations, formed Pakistan, while the
great center, populated mainly by Hindus, was designated
India. Even after partition, India had a heterogeneous
population of some 400 million, speaking over a dozen major
languages and many varieties. Most of these diverse peoples
were united in their struggle for independence within the
All India National Congress, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Congress Party, the successor to the
National Congress, became the dominant political force in
independent India. Congress held about 70 percent of the
seats in the Constituent Assembly at the time of
independence. Following the elections of 1951 1952 for the
first parliament, under the Constitution of 1950, Congress
won an even larger majority in the House of the People (Lok
Sabha). A dozen or more parties shared the rest of the
seats, with the Communist Party's 5 percent being the
largest segment, although a coalition of other parties
formed the opposition.

Another election in 1957 marks the
beginning of the second half of our period. The Congress
Party continued its domination of Indian politics. Although
the number of minor parties was somewhat reduced, the
largest single share of the remaining seats went once more
to the Communist Party, which again led with only 5 percent.
Virtually the same situation obtained following the
elections of 1962, which closes our study of Indian
politics. Thus throughout our period, the Congress Party
kept firm control of the national government with
substantial majorities in Parliament, despite the fact that
the party never obtained a majority of the popular vote. The
minor parties kept alive by demonstrating substantial
support in elections and by victor in the state assemblies,
and they mounted a serious challenge to the Congress Party
after our combining to win about 45 percent of Lok Sabha at
the 1967 elections.

Continuity
and Change since 1962

In comparison
with other countries, India featured more than the average
amount of party stability from 1950 through 1978, but the
system was considerably less stable after 1962 than before.
Only one of our two original parties lasted to 1978, and one
new party qualified for study.

Original
Parties, Terminated

082
Communist Party. Long divided into "right" and
"left" factions, the party split formally in 1964, with the
leftist faction emerging as the Communist Party-Marxist.
Informally, the new divisions were called "Moscow" Communist
Party (CPI) and Peking" Communist Party (CPI-M). Although
the CPI inherited the label as the "regular" Communist
Party, we regard the pre-1964 party as terminating with the
split, for it divided into successors of roughly equal size.
While most observers judged the CPI-M as the stronger, the
Marxists themselves suffered a split in 1969, when some of
the more extreme revolutionary pro-Chinese members formed
India's third communist party, CPI-Marxist-Leninist, an
offshoot eschewing electoral politics for more forceful
political action. Contesting separately in elections, the
CPI and CPI-M divided the communist vote between them,
winning on the average just less than 5 percent of the Lok
Sabha seats in the 1967, 1971, and 1977 elections and thus
failing to qualify as major parties under the terms of our
study.

Original
Parties, Continuing

081
Congress Party. The Congress Party suffered a
major split in 1969 with the creation of the Opposition
Congress Party, but we do not regard this as terminating the
Congress Party. In 1969, opposition developed within the
party both to the socialist program being pushed by Congress
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and to her leadership style. An
Opposition Congress Party was formed with its own president,
national committee, and parliamentary party. Although less
than one quarter of the Congress MPs rallied to the
Opposition Congress, the Gandhi group was reduced to 39
percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha in 1970. Kept in power
with support from other parties, including the CPI, Indira
Gandhi's party (regarded as a continuation of the Congress
Party but now known as Congress-Ruling) lost seats only
temporarily. Her Congress (R) actually gained votes and
seats its in the 1971 elections. In firmer control of
Parliament than before, Mrs. Gandhi pushed ahead rams, even
declaring a national emergency in 1975 to control
opposition. Her authoritarian rule served to coalesce her
political critics into a united opposition, and the result
was a stunning defeat for her personality and her party.
Left with less than 30 percent of the parliamentary seats,
her Congress-Ruling divided over Mrs. Gandhi's leadership
once again. A minority of members followed her out of the
party in 1978 to form the Indian National Congress (I)--for
Indira.

New Parties, Continuing

087 Janata
(People's) Party. Mrs. Gandhi's surprise call for
elections in 1977 gave rise to the Janata (People's) Front,
a coalition of her political opponents. The Janata Front
parties, which won 50 percent of the Lok Sabha seats, joined
with the newly formed Congress for Democracy (5 percent of
the seats) to form the Janata Party, which controlled
Parliament and toppled the Congress Party from leadership of
the national government for the first time since
independence.

Summary

The Indian party landscape in 1979 was significantly
different from that at the close of our original time
period, but prominent features remained the same. The
National Congress Party had split not once but twice and was
unexpectedly ousted from power by a coalition of parties
conglomerated into the Janata Party, whose unifying theme
was opposition to Indira Gandhi. Nevertheless, the Congress
Party, with nearly 25 percent of the seats, remained the
only other party with more than 5 percent and continued as a
potent force in Indian politics. Despite fragmentation, the
communists in the form of the Communist Party-Marxist
persisted at the national level as a small but politically
significant force, occupying a position not too dissimilar
from that in 1950-1962. The entirely new feature in the
landscape is the People's Party. It is problematic how long
this coalition of former rivals can maintain the solidarity
in government that they found in opposition and whether the
coalition can develop into an institutionalized political
party that can survive over time like the Indian National
Congress.

[For party politics in India since 1962, go
to the essay by Chad
E. Bell]

1. Our study of party politics in India
is based on a file of 4,582 pages from 112 documents, all
of which are in English (see Table 1.3). Much of the
literature in the file discussed other parties excluded
from the study for not meeting our strength criterion,
including the Swatantra, Praja Socialist, and Jan Sangh.
The bibliographic search and indexing of material for the
file was done primarily by Daniel A. Floras, who was
assisted in the development of the file by David Keebler,
Jeffrey Millstone, Jean Jacobsohn, and Jarol Manheim.
Madeline Smith used the file to code the Congress Party
on the variables in the ICPP conceptual framework.
Frances Honecker and Kenneth Janda coded the Communist
Party. Richard Park was our consultant, and Ronald
Herring helped to update our account through
1978.

2. Indeed, the Janata coalition
deteriorated in the summer of 1979, and in January 1980
Indira Gandhi's Congress-I Party won a stunning victory,
capturing about 70 percent of the parliamentary seats and
returning Mrs. Gandhi to power as prime minister.